Elijah Gates

Elijah Gates (17 December 1827-4 March 1915) was State Treasurer of Missouri from 1877 to 1881 and a Confederate States Army colonel during the American Civil War.

Biography
Elijah Gates was born in Garrard County, Kentucky in 1827, the son of a large plantation owner, and he moved to a Buchanan County, Missouri farm in 1846. He enlisted in the Confederate States Army upon the start of the American Civil War in 1861, serving as a captain in the Missouri State Guard before rising to the rank of colonel in Sterling Price's Army of the West. Gates commanded the 1st Missouri Cavalry Regiment and came to command a brigade of Lewis Henry Little's division. Gates fought at Pea Ridge, Iuka, Corinth, Champion Hill, Vicksburg, and Atlanta, and he lost an arm at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee in 1864. He was wounded five times, captured three times, and had four horses shot from under him, and he became State Treasurer of Missouri in 1877. He served as US Marshal for the Western District of Missouri under President Grover Cleveland and later became a bus businessman, and he died in 1915 at the age of 87.